Russian Envoy Says Serbs Have Agreed to Stop Gorazde Attacks

ByReuters and Associated PressApril 14, 1994

RUSSIAN peace envoy Vitaly Churkin said yesterday he had won an apparent commitment from the Bosnian Serbs to stop their offensive against the Muslim pocket of Gorazde, a United Nations-designated ``safe area.''

``I think I've got a commitment from the Serbs that it's not their intention to resume fighting,'' Mr. Churkin said in Sarajevo after meeting UN force commanders, United States peace emissary Charles Redman, and international peace mediators Lord Owen and Thorvald Stoltenberg. ``There is no fighting and shelling in Gorazde now,'' he added.

Two NATO airstrikes stilled Serb artillery and tanks that had been blasting Gorazde, but the Serbs reacted angrily by blocking movements of UN peacekeeping forces, which had summoned the planes. Europe Union sues Greece

The decision was reached after Greece, an EU member, refused to back down. The EU will take Greece to the European Court of Justice, the group's high court.

Greece has blocked all shipments of goods to its neighbor since Feb. 16, highlighting their dispute over the use of the word Macedonia. Athens, which alleges that Skopje has territorial claims on the Greek province of Macedonia, tried to prevent international recognition of the new republic under that name. In the past year, seven EU nations and the US have recognized it as ``the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia,'' the temporary name under which it was admitted to the UN. Britain: `IRA need not surrender'

BRITAIN has told the Irish Republican Army (IRA) it has no need to surrender to gain a seat at Northern Ireland peace talks. But Northern Ireland Minister Patrick Mayhew warned the outlawed guerrilla group that it must still renounce violence permanently if it wants to join political talks on the province's future.

Mayhew's surprise comment - made to the US Foreign Policy Association in New York on Tuesday - could help the faltering Anglo-Irish peace process, which had offered the IRA a place at the negotiating table within three months if it laid down its arms.

Mayhew said: ``The ending of the armed conflict which has so afflicted the lives of so many in Northern Ireland over the last 25 years - that is not going to require any surrender. It will be resolved only through the renunciation of violence.''